The view that mental derangement might be due to natural and/or supernatural causes was also held by

physicians. While medical men usually presumed that an illness was due to natural causes and prescribed treatment accordingly, there is no doubt that is the circumstances were too bizarre or too far beyond their past experience physicians would accept supernatural explanations. A case reported by Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502) is an apt illustration.

A new extraordinary disease [he wrote] is nowadays rife which, though I have seen and treated it, I scarcely dare to describe. A girl in her 16th year was seized with pain in the lowest part of her belly and kept on trying to pluck it away with her hands. Then she broke into terrible screaming and her belly swelled up at the spot, so that it looked as if she were eight months pregnant. When her voice failed she flung herself about from side to side on

her bed, and, sometimes touching her neck with the soles of her feet, would spring to her feet, then again falling prostrate and again springing up. She would repeat these actions in exactly the same manner until she gradually came to herself and was somehow restored. When asked, she hardly knew what had happened.

Investigating this disorder, I concluded that it arose from the ascent of the womb, harmful exhalations being thus carried upwards and attacking the heart and brain.

I employed suitable medicines, but found them of no avail. Yet it did not occur to me to turn aside from the beaten track until she grew more frenzied and, glaring round with wild eyes, was at last violently sick and vomited up long bent nails and brass pins together with wax and hair mixed in a ball, and last of all a lump of food so large that no one could have swallowed it whole. As I saw her go through exactly the same procedure many times, I decided she was possessed by an evil spirit who blinded the eyes of the spectators while he was doing all this. She was handed over to physicians of the soul and then gave proof of the matter by plainer signs and tokens. For I have often heard her soothsaying and seen her doing other things besides, which went further than any violent symptoms produced by disease and even passed human power. [54]

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Kicked Out Of Heaven Vol. II: The Untold History of The White Races cir. 700-1700 a.d. is a 3 volume series that will be released one by one. This book details everything about European society and mentality. In this edition you will find these facts: Alcoholism & The Blue Devils, Insanity & Lead Poisoning, Ergot (LSD) Hallucinations, The Sweating Sickness & Leprosy, The Tobacco Enema & Leeches, The Defloration Mania, The Dancing Mania, The Black Death, The Gravediggers & Body Snatchers, Jews Poisoning the Wells, Millions of Deaths, Folklore & Superstition, Magic Mirrors & Crystal Balls, Witches Dancing in Baby Blood, Pants Made of Human Skin, Necromancy & Ghost Armies, Attacks from The Undead, Lycanthropy & Were-Wolves, Multiple Cases of Vampires, Who is Satan, Lucifer & The Devil!